


Evening Light

by hafren



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-24
Updated: 2009-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-03 16:14:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hafren/pseuds/hafren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vila and Avon, in old age, contemplate a change of residence</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evening Light

I checked the lines and put the couple of small fish into a bag to take back. Nothing much comes so close in, but getting the boat out to fish offshore seems such a hassle these days. I used to be able to handle it on my own, but it takes both of us now, and galvanising him to go with me is something I can only be bothered to do once a week. We need less to eat these days, anyway.

I picked my way out on to the rocks, looking for edible seaweed, which is tastier than you might think, and shellfish in the pools. It took more time than it should, because the tide wasn't long out and it was slippery underfoot; I was on hands and knees at one point. Last time I had a fall, I wrenched an ankle and it took ages to come right again. I've been scared of falling since then.

I love walking on the beach, though. It's even better in summer when you can go barefoot and feel the scrunch of sand, but it's good enough any time. It's got all these marks on it, tiny faint fans of lines from these little grey birds that scuttle up and down all the time, bigger ones from the gulls, maybe the odd paw-print from an otter, lovely curvy patterns that the waves make, going and coming, and my size nines in the middle of them all, as if I'm just part of it. I always stay out longer than I mean to.

The chill got to me in the end, and I couldn't wait to get back inside, but first I went to the shed to check on the space-hopper. We clean it every week, start it up just to test it's still working. We haven't used it since we last did a supply run, months ago, but it's our only link to the world outside this planet, so it matters. The engine coughed a bit, but it still ran sweet enough. I was more worried about the time it took me to climb the steps, and the way I couldn't catch my breath at the top. Made a worse noise than the engine.

When I got back inside - underground, I should say - he was tidying up, or trying to. He'd dropped something on the floor and he was trying to get hold of it with the blade-on-a-stick thing he made for that, but it doesn't work very well. We really need something with a grab mechanism on the end, like those things you used to get in fairgrounds, but it isn't the sort of thing he's good at inventing. Techie computer stuff, yes, but not things that actually work in the real world. You need an engineer for that, as I said once without thinking what it would do to him.

He cursed under his breath and finally bent down, very slowly and creakily, to pick the thing up – it was a cup, I could see now. He's been dropping things quite a lot lately. It didn't look broken though, which was just as well; we don't have many of anything. I watched from the doorway until he was upright again and had stopped gasping; then I came in like I'd just arrived and hadn't seen anything.

"Got you some fish". I put the stuff on the table to clean later, and sank into my chair. "It's cold out."

"I've got coffee ready." He poured it carefully, and brought the cups over, glancing at the fish on the way. "Not much again, then. Do we need to go out in the boat?"

I warmed my hands on the cup and thought about it. "To be honest," I said, "I don't think we can live here much longer. It's getting too much like hard work."

He was quiet for a while. "Is it the fishing? I know you've never liked doing it. Stop if you want; I can get by on concentrates and the stuff you eat."

"Greens? Berries? Come off it; you've always hated them."

He shrugged. "I don't notice different tastes so much these days."

"It isn't just the fishing. Everything's more effort, even climbing into the hopper. And that's getting no newer; if it conks out, we're on our own here. I think we need to move to a town somewhere."

He didn't reply. "Come on," I said, "this place was a good hide-out when we needed it, but that was a long time ago."

(Thirty-five years, to be exact. It was the rat-in-a-box's idea to come to Aristo. The last question Avon ever asked it, after we'd picked it up on the run and were hiding out for the night. I suppose the little sod naturally thought of home. Anyway it was the last idea it ever had, because it asked us why we needed a bolthole, and when I'd told it what happened in the silo, it was careless enough to make a sarky remark about finding Blake. I was looking for something to hit it with, when Avon picked it up and threw it against a rock. Repeatedly, and without a word. He didn't stop until it was in bits, and he threw those on our campfire. Smelt terrible, but by the morning there was nothing left but twisted bits of blackened metal. Can't say I cried.)

-He sipped his coffee absently – it was still way too hot for me but he didn't seem to notice the temperature. "How much of that do we have left?" I asked.

"Running low. Not much fuel left for the generator either." He paused. "I suppose you might be right."

"Course I am. Winter's coming on again, and you know what a drag it'll be getting more supplies. It'll be safe enough to move somewhere more populated now, and we can live a lot more easily. Get a little flat with gadgets that work. Go to the shops for food, like normal people."

It wasn't until we arrived on its home territory that I realised we might have had a use for the rat-in-a-box. It could have got all those handy systems up and running again. But we did all right on our own, in the end. Cleared out all those creatures in the tunnels, got the underground garden growing again, worked out what was safe to eat up on the surface, so the concentrates didn't run out so fast. It was a hell of a long journey to get provisions of any kind, that was the trouble, so we didn't do it often. But we managed, back then. Everything seemed easier, less effort, back then.

I never thought, when I was young, that I'd get to like the outdoors, but then I'd never been anywhere it was safe before. Just for a moment, I thought about never walking on sand with bare feet again, never hearing seagulls or tasting salt in the air, and I felt a twinge like the one I get in my back on a cold morning, only this one was somewhere I couldn't put a name to.

"I'm not saying I won't miss anything here," I said. "My hydro-whatsit garden, I've got quite attached to that."

"Maybe you can start another one."

"Yeah, course I can."

I probably won't, though. I'll move on and forget about it, or buy the stuff and leave it in the box. Like you say you'll give people a call and never get around to it.

"Tell you what," I said, "start thinking about places we might go. You do the research on that and I'll have a look around and decide what we should pack."

It's amazing how much junk you accumulate, even at the back of beyond. I kept unearthing stuff that made me smile, like the prehistoric-looking cart we'd made to bring driftwood back, but I knew we couldn't take that much in the space-hopper. From time to time, I asked him if there was anything he wanted to keep, but he said no.

To tell the truth, we could be gone in a day. I've always been handy at leaving places in a hurry. But I'm dragging it out for longer, because I know the things that bind him to the place aren't the kind we can take with us. I'm waiting for the coffee to run out; he'll be all impatience to go then.

I've taken the lines up already; no sense in killing anything we don't need. We're both living on greens and berries now, and the last of the concentrates. And it's true; he doesn't notice the taste, at least he never makes a face at it the way he once would have. They say you lose your sense of taste as you get older, which seems sad. I haven't, yet. On the other hand, he can still see all the way down the beach, to things that are just a blur for me.

I still go out for seaweed. There's no need really, but the closer we get to leaving, the more I want to fix things in my mind. It isn't that I don't want to go, exactly. I really do think we'll be better off in a town – maybe I could even get some glasses while I can still see past my nose. It's something to do with why we're going. Having to. Whenever I see a big wave come in now, with rainbows in the spray, or hear gulls calling, I find myself thinking: that might have been the last time.

On the day before we leave, I think I'll haul all the things we aren't going to take with us out through the tunnels, up to the beach. I'll make a bonfire of it all and we'll sit beside it and eat the last of the food. We get pleasant afternoons at this time of year, not the sticky heat of summer but a sort of distant warmth. I'll lie back and close my eyes, feel the late sun on the lids.

And he'll wander off to his favourite vantage point on the dunes above the beach and look down on it.

"You should get some photos," I'll say, "we can take them with us."

But he won't. What he's looking at, you can't photograph, because it isn't there except in memory. I've followed the line of his eyes often enough, and even after so many years, I can still picture the scene; see where they stood, Cally and Blake, and where he appeared with his gun, when he came to rescue them. I've seen him look at that spot so many times; I think it was one reason he was content so long in this place, where things went right for once.

There are things that just happen, you can't keep them. I saw him there once when the sun was low in the sky, the light long and slanting; it cast his shadow right across the beach as far as the water's edge. There was a lovely pinkish tinge to the sky, or maybe it was mauve. I thought about taking a photo myself, but that sort of light never seems to quite come out in pictures somehow.


End file.
